Nic Van Dongen: Economist tells only half the story

Tuesday

Sep 2, 2014 at 12:26 PM

If Peter Morici, the writer of “Obama sends Burger King to Canada” (Commentary Aug. 29), is truly a business professor at the University of Maryland, he should go back to school and take a refresher course in economics.

If Peter Morici, the writer of “Obama sends Burger King to Canada” (Commentary Aug. 29), is truly a business professor at the University of Maryland, he should go back to school and take a refresher course in economics.

The decision by Burger King to relocate its headquarters to Canada has nothing to do with Obama but everything to do with pure greed. All those economists that keep crying out about the high taxes paid by businesses in the United States, preventing economic growth and comparing us with “foreign rivals,” seem to forget that personal income taxes in the United States, compared with those rivals, are very low. No one in his or her right mind would want to switch the U.S. system of taxation for theirs.

Businesses want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want the low business taxes of their “foreign rivals” and the low personal income taxes of the United States. That’s the reason they are looking at tax inversions. Look at all the money their executives would make if that were the case. Greed!

Economists like Morici don’t look at the whole picture.

It takes money to run a country — a lot of money — and we spend more than we have. There is a phobia in this country about paying taxes and it shows.